Category Archives: Children

Don’t worry. Be happy.

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My grandson Nicholas, a new 3 year old, has recently finished potty training and is now enjoying the perks of no more nappy changes, along with the delight of wearing picture underwear.

Katy and Hans motivated him by using a reward chart with happy-face stickers for each success. Taped above the toilet, those lengthening lines of stickers gave Nick encouragement each time he successfully used the toilet.

When we were 3, a happy-face sticker was all we needed to make us happy. As we grew older, we needed bigger rewards like trips to the ice cream store, allowances, a day at the beach, or sleep-overs. Eventually we needed paychecks, new cars, vacation getaways.

Is it ok to seek happiness?

Scripture is dotted with quite a few happy faces. Ecclesiastes says, “I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.” (3:12-13)

We see that it’s ok to be happy, as long as we recognize it as God’s gift. When we begin feeling entitled to it, God will surely withdraw it. Our being happy isn’t his undercard. He’d rather see us obeying his instructions, studying his Word, drawing closer to him, submitting to his will.

But most of us just want to be happy. Sometimes it comes to us briefly but then disappears, making us angry. So what should we do? Are we supposed to find contentment in un-happiness?

Another Ecclesiastes passage provides the answer: “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other.” (7:14) God wants us to connect happiness and sadness to him, knowing there are important purposes in both.

This morning I struggled in prayer for more than 90 minutes over some exceptionally difficult issues, pouring out my longings one after another. I ended by expressing frustration to God for his lack of action on my requests after so many years of praying. And I was quite unhappy!

He quickly chided me, reminding me (in my thoughts) that happiness without end isn’t scheduled till heaven. Claiming it now is getting the cart before the horse.

Later, in my Scripture reading, he said the same thing in a different way: “Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” (James 5:13) In other words, even when he gives a bit of happiness, the point of it isn’t to please us but to motivate us to praise him. When happiness comes, we’re not to hold onto it but are to give it right back to him.

And when we do that, we get something far better than our own happy faces: the happy face of our Lord.

“May the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful.” (Psalm 68:3)

Longing to Help

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Children love to do whatever we’re doing. They see it as helping. We see it as extra work for us. Once in a while, though, we need to make time for them to try.

Recently Skylar saw me spreading peanut butter on a rice cake and pleaded to do the same. I tried to hand her the one I’d already fixed, but she wanted to make it herself. Since grandmas love to say yes, I plunked her on the counter and gave her a knife, the PB, and a rice cake. Although she eventually got it done, her effort was clumsy at best.

When children try to do what we do, they approach the project feeling capable of accomplishing adult work with adult tools and getting adult results. In their minds, they bring sophisticated competence to every task and could take the place of any one of us.

God describes a spiritual parallel much like this. We come to him to “get saved” and he saves us. Then we promptly begin a program to “save ourselves,” after the fact, trying to earn our salvation. It makes no sense but is as common as children believing they’re as skilled as adults. In terms of our relationship with God, we’re as unable to help him as a young child is to help us.

Does God see our behavior the way I saw Skylar’s? He says, “I’ve done it already and am trying to hand you the finished product.” But we want to do it ourselves, just as Skylar did. From his perspective, our assistance toward getting saved is but a clumsy mishandling of the perfect gift he wants to give us.

As I watched Skylar’s small hands struggle to manipulate her adult-sized knife, I knew she was in a learning process. Experience was teaching her, and she would do a little bit better next time. But in the case of our salvation, no amount of trying, even with better and better effort, can get the job done. God has seen to it that everything’s already been done, through the death of his Son.

To put ourselves in the role of assistant to the Almighty is improper and, from his perspective, laughable. Of course in reality, there’s nothing funny about trying to make ourselves good enough for God. Actually, it’s the opposite of funny. It’s a serious mistake.

When Nate and I were raising our family and the children misbehaved, he would snap his fingers to get their attention and say, “Act right.” It’s a good command, and it’s something God is hoping all of us will do, all the time. But applying right deeds as credit toward salvation is like asking Skylar to spread PB on 500 rice cakes in 5 seconds. It can’t be done.

“At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6)

Working at It

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There’s nothing like young children to make sure their parents and grandparents are accountable to the truth. When we read them a story and try to shorten it by skipping a few words, they interrupt and point out we missed a line. If we promise to play hide-and-seek as soon as nap time is over, they don’t forget. And when we say we love them, they’re watching continually for a demonstration of that.

These dynamics are probably part of God’s teaching of parents and grandparents, this accountability-to-children factor. It becomes ongoing motivation for us to practice living responsibly. An added dimension of this is that God wants us to act with similar accountability toward him. Interestingly, sometimes he prompts it exactly as children do.

“You haven’t told the whole truth,” he tells us, “so your lie-of-omission will come back to bite you.” This echoes a preschooler’s comment, “You skipped a line of the story.”

Or God might say, “Didn’t you promise to talk to me at the beginning of each day?” When we promise, we should follow through… like we do with that hide-and-seek game after naps.

And just like little ones watch for our loving behavior toward them, God longs for that from us, in response to him.

Young children seem to love their parents no matter what. They generously give them the benefit of every doubt, even when parental behavior is neutral toward them or, amazingly, even when it’s abusive. Some of it might be need-based since they have no one else to turn to, but there’s also a component of brightly-burning hope that refuses to be snuffed out by contrary circumstances.

These two relational pieces, loving no matter what and brightly-burning hope, are also present in our bond with the Lord. When our behavior isn’t loving toward him or even borders on abusive, his response is still, “I’ll love you no matter what.” Additionally he sets up unnumbered opportunities for us to demonstrate our love to him, having a brightly-burning hope that our actions will reinforce our words.

God consistently uses earthly parenthood as a biblical image of his relationship with us, attempting to eliminate some of our confusion about him. He encourages us to call him “Father” and expects human dads to be ongoing models in relating to their children of how he treats them.

But God knows that’s a tall order. Just stretching toward it is all any parent needs to do to bring delight to the Lord. Although we ought to read the whole storybook, play that post-nap game, and act consistently in love, we can’t always do it.

When that happens, God understands. But he also hopes we’ll keep on trying.

“Your love has meant hard work, and the hope that you have in our Lord Jesus Christ means sheer dogged endurance in the life that you live before God, the Father of us all.” (1 Thessalonians 1:3)